Figure of speech Definition Example

Alliteration Repetition of initial sounds of words. “marks of ​w​eakness, marks

Phonetic nature. of ​w​oe” (“London”, by Blake)

Anaphora Repetition of the same phrase in In every cry of every man,

consecutive lines in poetry, in a In every infant's cry of fear,
paradigmatic fashion. In every voice, in every ban,
Syntactic nature. (“London”, by Blake)

Chiasmus Inversion of words within similar “perverted passion and

syntactic structures passionate perversity”
Syntactic, morphological and semantic (“Introduction to ​Wuthering
nature. Heights​”, by Charlotte Brontë)

Cinematic
technique

Editorial intrusion

Hyperbaton An alteration in the canonical order of “How the chimney-sweeper's

the sentence. cry/ Every blackening church
Syntactic nature. appals” (“London”, by Blake)

Hyperbole Exaggeration. “thro' ​midnight​ streets I

Semantic nature. hear...” (“London”, by Blake)

Imagery Language that stimulates the senses “Fluttering and dancing in the
(sight, sound, taste, smell, touch) breeze” (“Daffodils, by
Wordsworth)

Litotes ​/laɪtəʊti:z/ An understatement introduced through “thy aid to my adventurous

the negative. It achieves the same Song,/ That with no middle
effect as hyperbole, though through an flight intends to soar”
opposite strategy. (​Paradise Lost​, by Milton)

Lyrical I The ‘narrator’ in a poem

Also: speaker, mask, persona, voice

Metonymy The use of a word to refer to a broader The ​river Thames​ in

idea “London”, by Blake stands for
nature​ as a whole.

Oxymoron Two opposite terms “Heavenly muse”

(pl.: oxymora)

Paradox The opposition of two ideas “Oracle of God.”VER

Parallel structure / Repetition of syntactic structures. “Marks of weakness, marks
Parallelism Syntactic nature of woe” [Noun+Prep+Noun]
(“London”, by Blake)

Personification Bestowing human features upon “When all at once I saw a

inanimate objects. crowd,/ A host, of golden
Semantic/ syntactic nature, depending daffodils;/ Beside the lake,
on the wording beneath the trees,/ Fluttering
and dancing in the breeze”
(“Daffodils”, by Wordsworth)

Recapitulation (typical of long poems)

A summary of what has already been
mentioned.

Redundancy

Repetition [Bear in mind that the repeated word “I wandered thro’ each
may have a different function from its charter’d ​street,/ Near where
first occurrence] the ​charter’d ​Thames does
flow” (“London”, by Blake)

“And ​mark​ ​(verb)​ in every

face I meet
Marks​ ​(noun)​ of weakness,
marks ​of woe.” (“London”, by
Blake)

Simile A comparison using like or as. “I wander’d lonely as a cloud”

(“Daffodils”, by Wordsworth)

Synecholoque /
synecdoche

Variation Paraphrasing, rephrasing: saying the

same things with other words.